Dress up your gingerbread cookies

Need an idea for decorating your gingerbread cookies this year? Whether you’re making them for the gingerbread cookie contest or just baking a batch to serve to your family, it never hurts to have a few original ideas to keep the look of the cookies fresh year after year.

I dressed up this batch like paper dolls – edible paper dolls. When I was rolling out the dough to shape my gingerbread men, I lightly pressed my cookie cutter into the dough without pushing all the way through. Once there was a faint outline on the gingerbread, I used a sharp knife to cut out the outline of a t-shirt, dress or other piece of clothing from the dough. Once you get the hang of cutting shapes out of the dough by hand, you can do hats and other items (umbrellas, pipes, etc) that you don’t need a stencil to shape. I baked and decorated each piece just like the full-sized cookies, then dressed up the cookie of my choice, securing the gingerbread shirt with a dollop of frosting. This technique made the cookies a bit thicker, but it also gave them a neat three-dimensional quality that my other cookies didn’t have.